But, that thread only seems to talk about the barebones stick itself (as in, not assembled in a case and a usb plug). I don't feel like building a stick myself, what are my options? What I want is a "lap stick", sized between a neo geo stick and a saturn stick (not a huge 2p thing).

Ideally something with a good japanese stick out of the box, and/or where the stick can be upgraded to something better? It's to play on a PC to be obvious.

I use my Hori & Madcatz SF IV TE Playstation 3/4 joysticks on my PC for MAME and Steam, too. They work fine & are great out of the box in my opinion. Some Sanwa parts and they are moddable too, if you prefer Siemitsu

People seem to like the Mayflash F300 a lot as a moddable base and it's in your size range, more so than the fullsize PS3/4 sticks.

It's worth mentioning that the failed NeoGeo X stick is readily available for cheap and has, well, the NeoGeo form factor. I think they're perfect for lap use. The stick is flawed in the way its pivot is constructed, but I find it perfectly playable. It has the general feel of a Japanese stick without being actual arcade quality - maybe a good starting point.

It's hard to recommend an actual lever without knowing your own preference. You mention the LS-56 which some really do rave about, but I find its spring much, much too stiff for confortable shmup use.

But yeah, for LS32 you I'd assume if you can find a new/used 'Hori Real Arcade Pro EX-SE' (360/ps3) that'll be the easiest route.There were 'VX-SE' sticks but assume much harder to find + premium price.

('SA' suffix = sanwa, 'SE' suffix seimitsu, no suffix generally going to be a hori own brand/sanwa if the TE sticks)Otherwise the ps3/360 TE sticks are pretty good to case to mod if you have to go down that route... but at that stage I guess it's more the recommendation for a modder?

I use my Hori & Madcatz SF IV TE Playstation 3/4 joysticks on my PC for MAME and Steam, too. They work fine & are great out of the box in my opinion. Some Sanwa parts and they are moddable too, if you prefer Siemitsu

You mean like this guy (real-arcade-pro-soulcalibur-vi-edition-for-playstation-4/)? How does that work on a PC? It has a USB port?

bigbadboaz wrote:

People seem to like the Mayflash F300 a lot as a moddable base and it's in your size range, more so than the fullsize PS3/4 sticks.

There seem to be good and bad versions or something like that? Hm, the F300 is the better version right? Also there is even more expensive/big "model number", the F500, is it any better than the F300?Also I don't know how big a PS3/4 stick is, but I don't mind a Saturn/Dreamcast-size one at all (doubt the ps one would be any bigger? I just don't want a huge 2P stick). A neo-geo-sized would be fine as well, but it would need to be as good as the original AES stick (cause I used it a lot so I would definitely notice if it was worse).

bigbadboaz wrote:

It's worth mentioning that the failed NeoGeo X stick is readily available for cheap and has, well, the NeoGeo form factor. I think they're perfect for lap use. The stick is flawed in the way its pivot is constructed, but I find it perfectly playable. It has the general feel of a Japanese stick without being actual arcade quality - maybe a good starting point.

That doesn't sound too good, that would definitely fall into" worse that the AES stick" right? Or maybe the AES stick is not that arcade-good after all? I remember liking it a lot, better than the Saturn/Dreamcast ones (on those I replaced the stick, but I don't remember if it was with sanwa/hori/seimitsu, it was a loooong time ago. At the time I did that for the nec, the md, ...). The original Saturn stick was better built, at least it didn't get stuck in corners.. The AES one was incredibly durable and pleasant. But ideally I would like the most precise stick for shmups.

bigbadboaz wrote:

It's hard to recommend an actual lever without knowing your own preference. You mention the LS-56 which some really do rave about, but I find its spring much, much too stiff for confortable shmup use.

Yeah, I just found that name in the thread I linked, but I have no personal reason to prefer it, it just came up the most. How would it differ from the LS-32? (also mentioned a lot). Of course a shmup can't have any bounce (for tap dodging) and that kind of things.

gray117 wrote:

But yeah, for LS32 you I'd assume if you can find a new/used 'Hori Real Arcade Pro EX-SE' (360/ps3) that'll be the easiest route.

Would it be that guy just to make sure? It does look nice. Somehow it does feel like the easiest option to choose.. As for modding, I did find some forgotten material somewhere but it'll wait. First let's play a few games.

This thread makes me nostalgic for my own stick hunting days. I put an LS-32 into a Mayflash (older model than those mentioned above) and an LS-40 into a Madcatz 360 SFIV standard edition stick. It sounds like this latter option would be perfect for your purposes as it was mine: not too big, works on PC and is easy to upgrade with your own choice of arcade quality parts - although I imagine newer models have replaced 360 sticks in the supply chain so not sure this helps you so much.

I don't know that much about the Mayflash stuff, but people like the 300 as a base for modding and I also thought it fit your size range.

The X stick is worse than the AES, but very similar. They tried to clone the AES one and got it largely right, but as I alluded to there is an issue with the pivot in their cloned lever design. The stick jumps the gate like an LS-32, but in a more pronounced way. It's noticeable, but somehow doesn't get in the way (for me) in-game. If you want arcade-perfect out of the gate, this isn't it. If you'd rather take a chance for $40 than spend more on the first shot, this could be it.

LS-56 is noticeably stiffer than LS-32. 32 is a long-time standard and personally for shmups, and Seimitsu, I don't know why people prefer any other.

Would it be that guy just to make sure? It does look nice. Somehow it does feel like the easiest option to choose.. As for modding, I did find some forgotten material somewhere but it'll wait. First let's play a few games.

Yeah that's the one. Not very common, vx-se even rarer. If you can find a hrap ex-se you can probably get a decent price - finding it is the only issue... But unless you simply have spare cash, a vx-se rarity/cost will probably make it easier to pay for a mod and get exactly what you want.

Otherwise, the mayflash FS sticks are perfectly fine to play out of box, sanwa style though, not seimitsu. Not aware of any actual differences between 300/500 but don't own either, think more is just 500 is just the newer sku.

The hori own brand kai based joysticks are similarly very nice, typically found used at FS price, but again much more sanwa style than seimitsu. And same with the street fighter TE sticks (albeit proper sanwa) which you'll find used at similar price.

...is ok. But you will want to mod the stick. Buttons probably matter less apart from personal taste. Acceptable, but anyone here will buy to mod, but priced well if they're still around ... well enough you can probably get 2

Thank you all for all that information. That is a lot to digest so let me try to reformulate, you tell me if I got most of it or not:

-That new neo-geo style stick is not as good as the original one, but also not as good as the PS2 one? As far as I remember the PS2 neo-geo stick was just as good as the original (played a lot of DOJ with that one, absolutely no issues), but it sounds like whoever did the PS3/4/xbox one didn't do as good a job. So not that one (I get that you say it's not that bad, but I would be curious if you also tried the PS2 one?).

-The mayflash F300 is the best/most practical price/quality/findability/customizability no-brainer compromise. It does out of the box have a sanwa stick instead of a seimitsu one, but that can be customized without too much hassle. Also Sanwa is not that bad for shmups? Maybe it was hori that I used to dislike for shmups, don't remember.

-Even better but harder to find/more expensive would be the 'Hori Real Arcade Pro EX-SE' (360/ps3) or ideally VX-SE.

-The LS32 does sound like a better idea for shmups than the LS56. An extremely tight spring would be annoying as you need to move a lot.

I use a Semitsu LS-56. It is very tight, this is my preference as for me this provides the best accuracy, I also use an octo gate. Look into the different models of Sanwa sticks used by the community and make an informed decision (a modded Sanwa is also an option but modding sticks is not for everyone).

Buttons wise you can not go wrong with Sanwa or Semitsu, I use Semitsu bottond because Sanwas are VERY sensitive (which some people like), you can rest your fingers on Semitsu buttons which is both a good and a bad thing but I personally find it more comfortable to able to do that. I have both accidentally triggered bomb on Sanwa buttons and activated a bomb a split seconf to late on Semitsu buttons as the button did not activate on touch it had to be clicked in.What type of shmups you play may have some influence on buttons, For most Cave games (and games slower paced then most Cave shmups, such as Touhou) Semitsu buttons will work just fine, if you play a lot games where bullets are flying at you faster then Cave games or the mechanics of the game mean you are constantly pressing different buttons very fast then Sanwa button may be optimal.

Also I'd not really recommend a small case mostly for comfort reasons / being able to rest the side of your palm stick side.

PCB, Brook is preferred but if not just research the PCB and make sure the PCB works well with your platform of choice and has minimal latency.

Also try a bat top, it's cheap so if you don't like it you can just put the ball top back on.

If you can get a stick pre-made for a good price with the above features - go for it, if not do not hesitate to buy the parts separately (don't forget wires) as you will almost always end up swopping parts out on your stick sooner or later anyway and they come apart and go back together in a very simple manner.

It took me 15 minutes to build my stick and I saved over $100, the parts where easier to assemble then mechano sets aimed at an 11 year old (no over eggageration). This was a VERY simple build consideing it is electronis, you just click things in place and screw a few screws, and again you'll end up doing this at some point if you own an arcade stick anyway.There are tutorial videos on YouTube but it is incredibly simple, I've assembled flat pack chairs that are more complex then an arcade stick, so do not let building one put you off, 9/10 you'll end up with a better stick and a fuller wallet.

_________________ A Hardcore gamers reaction to the Lack of Kinect games.Apparently i could of played Dodonpachi with it if i beat a entirely in Japanese Visional Novel piece of shit game called Instant Brain

I think there are a lot of great arcade stick options out there. However, what I would recommend is getting a used arcade stick and one that I couldn't recommend more is the Hori VX-SA. It has excellent input lag (as shown in the link provided above), it works on the 360, and has very responsive x-input on PC. It's a really solid buy that I think is under-rated. The buttons on the stick are a little bit meh, but all hori stick have meh buttons, so I'd recommend upgrading them to either sanwa or gamerfinger (which is really easy).

Even if you don't like this arcade stick, I would still recommend you buy a used arcade stick off of ebay. There are also some great deals on some hori VLX Kai's that I have seen. Overall, I think buying an arcade stick used is the way to go. They are durable pieces of equipment and at worst replacing any funky parts is easy and cheap. Really the most expensive parts of arcade sticks are the electronics (SA has top notch internals) and the box (SA has a great box).

Sounds like: -Seimitsu is the best for shmups like I vaguely remembered, and the LS-32 is more consensual, while the tighter LS-56 is the best for some experts. Probably a matter of taste, I'll have to try both but I'll start with the "de facto standard" LS-32 I think-Hori VX-ZZ sticks are great (for the box, electronics, customizability..), where ZZ is either: SE(Seimitsu) / SA(Sanwa) / ..., the best being ZZ=SE (so the Hori VX-SE), cause it has the Seimitsu physical parts out of the box.

@MrShotia:-about bat sticks, we had a few in France at the time, can't stand them -I see that you underscored the "get pre-made for a good price" option, would you happen to provide such a service?

--> But yeah otherwise (if MrShotia aint gonna make one for me) I think I have enough technical info to go search on the internets, any potential place apart from amazon? (not ebay, fuck them). Maybe play-asia, it was good at the time?

Hori sold such an Amazon Japan exclusive "Hori Real Arcade Pro VX SE Kai" arcade stick that had all Seimitsu parts installed from the get-go for the Xbox 360 gaming platform -- you can use it on a PC setup as well. I own one myself & have to say that it's an awesome arcade stick bar-none.

and here's another brand new "Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 SA" setup for the PS3 gaming platform: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hori-Real-Arca ... Swo2xb6DCO This particular HRAP arcade stick with all Sanwa parts installed from the get-go is based on the older HRAP base model used in the HRAP 2 for the PS2 console.